Fox Showing Once Again They Can’t Cover Soccer As They Buy In To The Stupid Wayne Rooney Narrative

I understand expecting quality soccer reporting from Fox is pretty much like expecting it to be 80 degrees and sunny in New York City during the month of February. After all, Fox has only been covering soccer longer then pretty much everyone else in this country. Seriously, they launched a channel devoted to Soccer in 1997 and yet their coverage of the beautiful game is still horrendous.

But this one takes the cake for a few reasons. First of all, Rooney scoring twice as a forward is just the headline to this article, but the actual article isn’t about that at all. The article doesn’t even mention that Rooney was playing as a striker after playing mostly as a midfielder for the past few months. That’s not really bad soccer coverage as much as it’s just bad journalism.

Second of all, Fox is just blindly buying right into the “striker is Wayne Rooney’s best position, see as soon as they let him play striker he scores two goals” narrative; which couldn’t be more wrong.

A few things here. Number one, Wayne Rooney playing as a striker had absolutely nothing to do with the two goals he scored today. The first one came on a penalty that was won by an incredible bit of skill, and the first bit of skill he’s shown in weeks, from Radamel Falcao. Rooney steps up and converts the penalty which he would have done just the same if he were playing as a central midfielder. His second goal was simply a rebound where he headed the ball into a wide open net that I don’t think anyone not named Messi could have possibly missed.

missed it by that much

Up until last week Rooney hadn’t lined up as a striker since August, which was before Radamel Falcao arrived and Robin van Persie was still recovering from the World Cup. Apparently those same pundits don’t realize that seven of Rooney’s 10 goals this year have come with him as a midfielder, so maybe if Fox could just do the teeniest bit of research next time they could start getting things right.